abelard's home latest changes & additions at abelard.org link to document abstracts link to short briefings documents quotations at abelard.org, with source document where relevant click for abelard's child education zone economics and money zone at abelard.org - government swindles and how to transfer money on the net latest news headlines at abelard's news and comment zone
socialism, sociology, supporting documents described Loud music and hearing damage Architectural wonders and joys at abelard.org about abelard and abelard.org visit abelard's gallery Energy - beyond fossil fuels France zone at abelard.org - another France
short descriptions of documents on www.abelard.org abelard's recommended links to other interesting and useful sites welcome to outer mongolia - how to get around this ger multiple uses for this glittering entity e-mail abelard at abelard@abelard.org The mechanics of inflation: The great government swindle and how it works - abelard Why Aristotelian logic does not work - abelard the psychology and development of Adolph Hitler Schicklgruber - abelard

why i use a non standard layout

As those who are used to my postings on uk.politics.misc will have noticed, I normally use no capital letters.
However, some papers on this website will be laid out more in keeping with the conventions of this society.

New translation, the Magna Carta
This page helpful? Share it ! Like it !  

i am regularly asked why i use a modified layout

first, extracts by r s kennedy [1] on e e cummings:

since he was a painter, he also brought a visual orientation
    to the placement of his poems on the page. 
    ...early in his career, he became known most widely for his
     placing of lowercase letters where capitals are expected,
     and especially for his use of a small 'i' for personal reference...
the persona he thus created represents someone who stands away from the crowd,
unappreciated, without power, yet able to open his heart with song
or mock the follies of society and denounce pretensions of authority.....

he had at length taught his audience how to read him.....

i developed this approach independently...some of my reasons
    have similarities....there are also some differences and additions...

1) i regard capitals as redundant as delimiters....full stops are
    sufficient...i do not revel in waste....

2) i regard 'proper nouns' as a false dichotomy....    
      a table is as due deference, as is a person...
      and the use of capitals for the ridiculous vanities
      that 'titles' such as 'the!! queen' and 'most
          reverend'....indicate...... are to me offensive...
               rather like a dog riding a bicycle... most undignified....
      such wordy appendages dehumanise....
          eg to call that great thinker jesus of nazareth, 'christ',
               is greatly insulting....

3) i use capitals for technical purposes...
        as i sometimes demonstrate...

4) i also rather like the net view that capitals are 'shouting'...
          i just take it a little further..

5)  i deliberately disrupt ‘accepted’ language in order
          to keep people awake...
      i regard words as a drug...
          as a detachment from reality for most...
     by disrupting the drug, i intend to awake people
          from dreaming and drifting....
     i draw attention to the
        REALITY of WORDS on the REAL PAGE....
    it is an attempt to separate the attention to the
         medium, away from attention to the message....
    i therefore seek to disrupt the link betwixt the medium and the message....
       in order
                 that............

       the medium then,,,,,
           becomes part of the message....[3]


advertising
disclaimer

the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls
are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds

[cummings, 1974, p.53]
advertising
disclaimer

there are so many tictoc
clocks everywhere telling people
what toctic time it is for
tictic instance five toc minutes toc
past six tic
...
(So, when kiss Spring comes
we’ll kiss each kiss each other on kiss the kiss
lips because tic clocks toc don’t make
a toctic difference
to kisskiss you and to
kiss me)

[cummings, 1974, p.101]

note eg toctic/toxic....and....you and to/you and two
              and (nervous) tic and itchy....tick...etc...


6 i have a rather monkish view of life....
    somewhere between medieval ‘philosophy/theology’and zen, where craft has even
    standing with ‘creativity’ and where ‘both’ elements interact/meld. where theory and
    pragmatics inform one another in unending partnership/‘sequence’, where pragmatics
    is informed by aesthetics and where sterile aesthetics does not supplant content,
    human experience and communication.

    but reject
    bernard of clairvaux type authoritarian and ‘the’ superstition/philosophy….confusions
           ...which wrecked the 12th century hippie revolution

    i regard the promotion of ego as muchly vanity.

7 as a filter...for the lazy minded seriously cannot be bothered
        to put in the effort
    needed to adapt and to understand...
    nor generate the judgement to discriminate
        form from function.
    thus i am less likely to waste time on them...


8 advertising...it is different...so people tend to remember,
       thus, u build up profile...

9 saves me having to watch the shift key...
      as i am a rotten one finger typist....

10 i approach newsnet (usenet news groups) as a converstaion medium,
           not as a school essay or as a piece of literature....
     i address my remarks to individual posters, rather than attempting to broadcast a message
          (although i am, of course, aware that newsnet is a public medium
            where many can, and do, read my messages).
     i, therefore, type as if speaking directly to another person as if in a conversation.... 

I fully reserve the right to be inconsistent
 


REFERENCES

1 Kennedy, Richard S., Introduction and commentary in
E.E. Cummings, Selected Poems
2 E.E. Cummings, Selected Poems
New York, Liveright 1994, ISBN 0-87140-153-3
3

McLuhan, Marshall, 1911 –
wrote a book the medium is the massage, devoted to drawing attention the contribution of form to communication.

Marshall McLuhan & Quentin Fiore, co-ordinated by Jerome Agel
the medium is the massage, 1967, New York, Random House 



email abelard email email_abelard [at] abelard.org

© abelard, 1998
v.1.0.2


all rights reserved

the address for this document is https://www.abelard.org/cummings/cumin-hi.htm

710 words
prints as 3 A4 pages (on my printer and set-up)


navigation bar ( eight equal segments) on 'posting style...why i use a non-standard layout - abelard'
  page